A month after toppling the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, East Germans retaliated against the Stasi by storming its headquarters. Despite the rampage, no one was hurt and the police records were saved.

The German government, which unified the former East Germany
and West Germany 11 months after the wall fell, preserves the
records at the Stasi archive office in Berlin for victims to
examine.

"Those who came out after reading the files, in general, get
a good idea of how close sometime, and how wrong at the same
time, state security or secret police was almost on their
skin," said Johannes Legner, an archives spokesman.

Legner said Stasi brutality was far worse in the 1950s: "They
kidnapped people. They, up to a certain extent, tortured them
or they had them in isolation. And in certain cases, they
killed people."

Yet intimidation was the Stasi's main weapon. Tens of
thousands of agents closely monitored people with television
and hidden movie cameras, listening devices and reports from
hundreds of thousands of informants.

The Stasi used monitoring and listening devices to spy on German citizens

Germany wants an estimated 300,000 Stasi informant code names
from the CIA, which mysteriously obtained the records in
1989, according to German officials.

Washington is to begin handing over CD-ROM copies in January
with the names, except some of the people the CIA apparently
wants to protect.

Learning about the past has proven difficult for Stasi
victims like Jens Asche. Fellow members of a protest group
whom he considered friends were actually infiltrators.

Asche was sent to prison and did not learn until his release
a year later that a son was born while he was in captivity.
He later confronted his betrayers, who offered only denials.

"I said 'are you crazy? I was in prison.' And they say, 'Yes,
but nothing happened,'" Asche said. "That is truly insulting.
Of course something happened. I became a father while I was
in prison, and I've never been able to repair the damage done
to my relationship."

Asche, whose marriage ended in divorce, said he remains wary
of people.

"When I open up to someone, when I meet a woman ... I want to
share my most inner feelings. I become aggressive and start
to cry," he said.

Germany has turned to the cinema to explore the painful
subject of the Stasi era. In the new film "Sonnenalle," a
young man learns at a police station that a friend, desperate
to earn money, has been spying on him.

The drama is played out in many forms, as East Germans
discover similar dark secrets that damaged their lives -- and
try to learn how to trust others again.